>>3186228Brooks was a great place to go to school. I look at it overall. I learned so much technically that I apply all the time. We just did a shoot where the talent was inside a literal mirror room, like a funhouse. Seven hours of prelighting for the one photo. Would've been two days had I not had a class where that was a concept we had to solve almost identically. It's also a great family of assistants and shooters and techs, we hire each other all the time. No better bar buddy on a travel job than someone who can bitch about college assignments when you went to school 15 years apart.
I did school almost entirely on loan, so I'm about $117k owed still, with about $22k paid off. I'm paying above my minimums and I'm a few months ahead, which is nice. It's been fuckin awesome for my credit score, and the interest is 3.2%, so I'm not stressed. I'd rather take $140k in loans now and pay them off and get the tax breaks and have killer credit so I can get better credit lines in the future. Unfortunately, I don't see the photo industry, particularly the sector I prefer to shoot in personally (documentary/conflict/domestic and political issues) to be economically sustainable for the foreseeable future, so my plan is investments that allow me to work in a field of my passion without the worry about providing for myself with filing dailies or shooting a story somewhere I hate.
I will say, I could've done school for ~$75k in debt, and worked throughout, but I chose not to. And I've advised a lot of students in universities I've spoken at not to work either. Is that coffee shop job as beneficial to you as having an extra 20-30 hours a week to study or shoot or learn? My last year of college I went to LA each week for a two day internship with an amazing photographer, and that lead to the Seliger gig in more than one way. It also gave me facetime with a studio manager, allowed me to see the office environments, and get an idea of the stuff involved in production.
NYC.
